When the Baba turned a Business Baron

It's high noon. The summer heat is unyielding and unkind; the unpleasantness further compounded by the lack of air-conditioners and the tardy movement of the two ceiling fans. Yet, the small hall with a seating capacity of around 50 is choc a bloc with television cameras; couple of yoga mats lie on the floor, and around 10 journalists are on alert, waiting for their subject to make an  appearance.

The place is Patanjali Yogpeeth in Haridwar in Uttarakhand, one of the largest yoga institutes in India. It's also the prize project of Ramdev, whose name is inevitably prefixed with baba, the honorific term assumed by the ascetics in the country.

Baba Ramdev enters the hall with 20-odd followers. Clad in a saffron cloth and wooden slippers, the Baba takes his position in the centre with the followers sitting behind him in a V-shaped pattern. Seated cross-legged, Ramdev's hands rest firmly on his knees, palms facing upwards.... it's time for Anulom Vilom Pranayama, a breathing exercise. Ramdev blocks his right nostril with his thumb and draws in air from the left nostril. The disciples follow suit. After a few seconds he releases the thumb and closes the left nostril with his ring finger. He then breathes out slowly through the right nostril.

The yoga session lasts for an hour, after which the cameramen pack up, the outdoor broadcasting vans make their exit from the sprawling campus and, the yoga guru quickly dons a new avatar: Baron Ramdev.

There haven’t been that many new, successful entrants in the FMCG world in the recent past at the national level. Barriers to entry are the high cost of awareness required for a national brand (read celebrity endorsements and mainstream TV advertising), managing a sophisticated network and uniform quality control. Ultimately, what works for Patanjali is the fact that the promoter of the brand, Baba Ramdev, is also its brand ambassador, and stands for good health and spirituality.  A big cost saver for the brand is that they don’t need to spend on advertising because of the high brand recall of Baba Ramdev whose popular TV show and public appearances have gained him mass media awareness at a very low cost. In addition, the Company reaps the benefits of a celebrity brand ambassador like Baba Ramdev for free (how he benefits from the brand is not clear, as he is not listed as an owner).

Commenting on the marketing of Patanjali’s personal care products, Ramdev had once said: “We don’t need our mothers and sisters to get half naked to sell our products, like the MNCs do. We don’t have the ideological crisis. We don’t indulge in glamour, obscenity or paid endorsements. I am the fee-less brand ambassador of Patanjali products.”

Baba Ramdev, who is driven around in a white Range Rover Evoque, initially found fame as a yoga evangelist, teaching the benefits of the Indian physical and spiritual discipline through television channel Aastha since 2000. “Business is a by-product,” he once said in an interview. “The Patanjali brand, prosperity and profit—everything is a by-product.” The Baba downplays his own role in building Patanjali into an emerging consumer product giant, saying his only role is that of a brand ambassador who works for free in television commercials representing the brands his company makes. Patanjali, which sells everything from shampoo and toothpaste to biscuits and noodles, and rice and wheat to honey and ghee, more than doubled its sales in the year ended 31 March 2016, from Rs.2,006 crore in the previous year (FY 2015). During the same period, sales of Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL), the local unit of Anglo-Dutch consumer products giant Unilever Plc. rose 4%.

A company with a similar product range and positioning of that of Patanjali is the Himalaya Drug Company which is also in the Rs.1500 crore turnover range and targets around 12% growth vis-a-vis Patanjali’s stated 20% target. Himalaya is a much older company than Patanjali, founded in 1937, though it started thinking of itself as an FMCG player only as late as 2009. It has also expanded beyond pharma to wellness and personal care , has its own stores, sells online – a very similar journey in fact. In that context, Patanjali’s growth is indeed commendable. Biotique is a beauty brand also based on the Ayurveda platform but has not expanded its product range.

Patanjali Ayurved Limited was founded as a small pharmacy in Haridwar in 1997 by P.P. Swami Ramdev Ji Maharaj.  Acharya Balkrishna is the Chairman of Patanjali Ayurved Limited and Mr. Rambharat is the Sr. Vice President of Patanjali Ayurved Limited. Patanjali Ayurved, makes nearly 800 products, from face creams to noodles. Priced considerably lower than offerings from multinational firms, Patanjali has started eating into the well-entrenched rivals’ market shares.

While it owns more than 15,000 exclusive outlets that sell healthy and organic consumer products and is into many product categories of personal care and food; hardly any market player took notice, when the company first introduced the products, leave alone imagining it as a potential business threat.

For the last decade, Baba Ramdev did not focus on proclaiming that his brand was the best. Instead, he told the Indians about the evils of MNCs, the virtues of products made in India, the corruption of corporates, the exploitation of farmers, the cancerous effects of fertilisers and chemicals and just about everything that surrounded his products. He just showed the nation the reasons and left the people on their own to explore his products. This was an absolutely brilliant ploy. Here no-one was pushing anything, only an environment was created where the Indian consumer wanted to see if the alternative to above evils was usable. The consumer might have been influenced by the fear of diseases or she might just have been patriotic enough to shun all evil multi-national firms. Whatever the reason, the Indian consumer already had a positive environment to try the Patanjali products.

The reasons for Patanjali’s accelerated growth in a 4P framework are:

•  Product: Differentiated product that appeals to the Indian belief in Ayurveda/natural remedies/‘hand’ medicine
•   Price: Discounted at 20 – 30% compared to competition. Low cost pack sizes – health juice sachets start at Rs 5, making their product accessible to many
•   Place: Distribution through Ayurvedic pharmacies which further strengthens their health proposition. They have a franchisee based distribution strategy. The recently announced tie-up with Future Group tie-up will definitely further enlarge Patanjali’s retail footprint and make it easily available to shoppers. Tie-ups with online retailers such as bigbasket.com not only give them access to a growing middle class base but also reduce their cost of distribution and display.
•   Positioning: Strong positioning on Ayurveda and health consistently reinforced by its ‘brand ambassador'.

One analyst, who has visited Patanjali factories multiple times, says Patanjali products are essentially herbal clones. “The process is simple. Top-selling products across brands are picked up from the market and then similar products are developed based on herbal formulations under Patanjali brands. Mostly, they are replicas of successful products of multinational companies,” the analyst said.  Products of Patanjali include -

• Nutrition and Supplements
• Grocery
• Medicine
• Home Care
• Personal Care
• Books and Media
• Health Care

The Yoga evangelist turned business baron has just set the bar higher for his consumer products business — to Rs.1 trillion (Rs.100,000 crores) in net sales, a target he thinks can be reached in 10 years, if not five. The target is a near 20-fold increase from the Rs.5,000 crore in net sales that Patanjali posted in the business year that ended on 31 March 2016. The breadth of Ramdev’s ambition can be gauged from the fact that HUL, which has been around in India since 1888, hasn’t even touched one-third of Ramdev’s target. In the year to 31 March 2016, HUL posted net sales of Rs.32,482.72 crore. The target also represents nearly a third of the size of India’s entire packaged consumer products market at present, estimated at about Rs.3.2 trillion (Rs.320,000 crores) a year and projected to grow 12-15% annually over the next five years, reaching Rs.6.1 trillion (Rs.610,000 crores) in 2019.

Moreover, the company which manufactures and markets everything from flour, ghee, biscuits, noodles, spices to honey and toothpaste aims to continue growing at 100-125% annually for the next three years. Some of this growth could also come from international expansion, an option that it may explore if the domestic market gets saturated.

In April 2016, Mumbai-based Pittie Group, the nationwide distributor for Patanjali products, sewed up a distribution arrangement with Apollo Pharmacy. It also has a marketing arrangement with Kishore Biyani’s Future Retail Ltd for selling Patanjali products in 243 cities across India. Patanjali Ayurved has also teamed up with billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s retail chain Reliance Retail to sell its products. Over the next year, Patanjali will increase its retail presence through 4,000 distributors, more than 10,000 company-owned outlets, 100 Patanjali-branded stores and supermarkets, the company said in a statement recently.

“The company’s business model is rewriting the rules of consumer marketing in India. We think rapid growth will continue, driven by an ever-increasing consumer demand for its products; the launch of new categories; and a broader retail and distribution network,” Amit Sachdeva, an analyst with HSBC Securities and Capital Markets (India) Pvt. Ltd, wrote in a report about Patanjali dated 5 February 2016.

Contrary to the Baba’s claims, Patanjali does outsource manufacturing of some products like other packaged consumer products companies do. For instance, biscuits are made by Delhi-based Sona Biscuits and juices by a bunch of companies, including GK Dairy and Milk Products Pvt. Ltd . Haridwar-based Aakash Yog Health Products Ltd manufactures noodles for Patanjali. Aakash used to make noodles for HUL’s Knorr brand, till recently.

Over the next few years, Patanjali will focus on six areas: natural medicine, natural cosmetics, natural dairy products and food, natural cattle feed and feed supplements, bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides, and natural indigenous seeds, said Ramdev. Patanjali is already a Rs.2,000 crore brand, but Baba Ramdev is not finished with it yet. The yoga guru who created the popular Ayurvedic products brand wants to expand capacity and push back multinationals as he fights for what he calls ‘economic independence’. There are plans to add five food parks—one in Madhya Pradesh and another one in Maharashtra have been decided upon. These are of huge capacity. More are underway. Patanjali has plans to open food parks in four or five locations, where investments will be very, very big. The plants will help with value addition of food—the idea is to do away with the middlemen involved in procurement of agriculture produce from the farmers directly. Along with this, it will help the company to increase the supply of raw material for herbal, cosmetic, natural products. The company plans to grow herbs locally.

Ramdev, who first shot to fame as the Aastha TV channel’s tele-healer in the early 2000s, has over the past decade or so expanded his interests to include politics, society, agriculture and moral policing, besides the buisness of fast moving consumer products and wellness. After Patanjali's success, other spiritual and yoga gurus have entered the market with branded products. In Baba Ramdev's words, "We want everyone to win, we don’t want to take over Indian companies—they are not my competition, we all must work together. And whoever is working should work carefully. I don’t consider them competitors—they are most welcome, but they should keep a few things in mind. First, manufacturing unit should be owned by them. Second, whoever wants to enter the category, should have studied about Ayurveda—it helps build trust. Third, these (products) are all an outcome of years of scientific research—they should focus on that."

To prevent getting beaten by an upstart, multinationals are quite likely to include more herbal and natural offerings in their own product portfolios. Colgate, for example, has introduced a new “Made in India” variant of toothpaste with neem tree extracts. India’s largest packaged consumer goods giant HUL in 2015 relaunched Lever Ayush, its ayurvedic range, to be sold exclusively online. HUL also acquired ayurvedic hair oil and shampoo brand Indulekha in December 2015, forking out $48 million, to strengthen its presence in the premium category. Suddenly, companies that sell personal care products made of ayurvedic, herbal or natural ingredients, are in expansion mode and seeking a bigger share of the market.

It is also not clear if Patanjali will be able to profitably scale up its foods operation, or if it will remain largely a niche personal care business. But as global corporates try to fight the yoga guru on his own turf, they also face challenges. For one, their costs will inevitably rise as they’re forced to launch or acquire new brands and advertise them to the hilt. Patanjali, by contrast, has just one brand—and one brand ambassador—to look after. That’s reasonably risky, but so long as Baba Ramdev appears on TV looking healthy and fit, the company won’t need movie stars or cricket players to endorse its products. More importantly, multinationals’ natural instinct has been to wow emerging-market customers by flaunting the clinical research that’s gone into their chemicals, lotions and pastes. An attempt to switch track and go herbal may ultimately be rejected as inauthentic.

While Patanjali has seen unparalleled success in recent times, some of its apparent strengths could turn out to be its limitations. For instance, most of its products are branded under “Patanjali” umbrella and are then linked with generic names such as Patanjali Atta Noodles, Patanjali ghee, Patanjali Cornflakes. Their communication largely focuses around the name “Patanjali” and not around any sub-brand. This could affect sales of their key categories, if inconsistent product categories do not perform well. It can also confuse consumers if Patanjali want to increase “product depth” and launch variants with minute differences. Furthermore, “Patanjali” is largely co-branded/co-promoted with Baba Ramdev and his companion Acharya Balkrishna. Any questions arising on their integrity is likely to affect the brand’s performance.

Baron...errr Baba Ramdev is perceived to be close to India’s ruling coalition, and has appeared with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on several public platforms. But the yoga guru disclaims any interest in politics. “I want to stay the way I am—sanyas, rashtradharma... (renunciation and duty to the nation) I want to do everything without any greed. Directly, I’ll never participate at any political position,” concludes Ramdev. In a recent interview, the Baba spoke about his future plans, "I’m not a brand. The brand is not my ultimate goal, the brand is my by-product. But, yes we have plans to open a university in every state, where students can train in Vedic and modern studies."

Disclaimer / Caveat: Whatever I have stated is publicly available information and does not represent the view of the firm I work for.

(This post is not copyrighted and may be reproduced freely with appropriate attribution of source)

Taxing Time for Nokia in India

The company which has won the global PC market has been completely flummoxed by the uniqueness of the smartphone market in recent years. Not surprisingly, Microsoft has now announced that it will reconfigure the smartphone hardware business. Technology research firm Gartner’s latest quarterly smartphone sales report, released in May 2016, suggests that Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS has less than 1% market share globally.

Microsoft bought Nokia’s devices and services business in 2013, paying $7.1 billion for it, in an attempt to take on Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and to a certain extent, BlackBerry, at the time. But this business never quite took off. In July 2015, Microsoft laid off 7,800 people from that acquisition, a move that cost the company $7.6 billion.

The global market share of Windows smartphones has fallen below 1% in the first quarter of 2016, according to research firm Gartner. In India, too, the market share of Windows smartphones is estimated to be less than 2%, with Google’s Android operating system (OS) smartphone market share at over 80%—both globally and locally.

Nokia’s Chennai factory was however kept out of the Microsoft deal as Nokia has been fighting a tax case with the Indian government since 2013. In January 2013, the Indian tax officials had asked Nokia to clarify on non-payment of tax deducted at source on software supplies and change in its accounting model. The income tax department had slapped a notice on Nokia’s Indian subsidiary – Nokia India - for violating withholding tax[1] norms since 2006 while making royalty payments to the parent company in Finland.

Taxes in India are levied by the Central Government and the state governments. Some minor taxes are also levied by the local authorities such as the Municipality. Value Added Tax (VAT) is a major source of revenue for Indian States. Other state level taxes include Entertainment tax, Entry Tax and Octroi.

Nokia and a string of multinational companies have come under the scanner of tax authorities of India. The companies have denied any wrongdoing but tax authorities say they need to protect revenues. Value Added Tax (VAT) is a major source of revenue for Indian States. Other state level taxes include Entertainment tax, Entry Tax and Octroi.

The Madras high court had first stayed the order and then asked Nokia to approach the Commissioner of Income Tax (appeals). In addition to legal action being pursued in India, the Ministry of Finance in Finland has launched the mutual agreement procedure (MAP) with its counterpart in India under the bilateral double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA)between the two countries to arrive at a mutually agreeable solution.

Here is a timeline of Nokia's tax issues in India:

8-Jan-13	India’s Income Tax department inspects the Chennai factory
21-Mar-13	The Income Tax Department issues Rs 2,080 crore (€250m) tax demand (later rectified to Rs 2,649 crore) on Nokia India, alleging that it has failed to withhold tax on the payment made to its parent as ‘royalty for the software’ used in its mobile phones since 2006
17-Apr-13	The Delhi High court asks the Income Tax Department to re-examine its claim against Nokia and not to take any further coercive action. The court sends the matter back to the I-T Commissioner for fresh examination, and asks him to decide the matter before 31 May 2013
8-May-13	At Nokia India’s request, Finland invokes the Mutual Agreement Procedure (‘MAP’) under the DTAA[2], asking the competent authorities in India to seek an agreement on the application of the DTAA
31-May-13	The Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals) dismisses Nokia India’s appeal
Jul-13	Nokia India agrees to pay a ‘deposit’ of Rs 700 crore towards ‘stay of demand’ raised by the Income Tax Department and prevent the full amount of the claim by the DDIT becoming payable while it awaits a hearing before appellate authorities
3-Sep-13	Nokia announces that it intends to sell its Devices & Services division to Microsoft
25-Sep-13	India’s Income Tax Department freezes all assets of Nokia India
9-Dec-13	Nokia India offers that if the asset freeze is lifted, so that the sale to Microsoft can proceed, it will transfer all proceeds to an escrow account containing a minimum of Rs 2,250 crore, as security for the tax claim
12-Dec-13	The Delhi High Court agrees to unfreeze Nokia India’s assets in return for the deposit of Rs 2,250 crore into an escrow account[3]
	As conditions for doing so, the Court requires that Nokia provide:
	1) a parent company undertaking amounting to Rs 3,500 crore on behalf of Nokia India
	2) unconditional undertaking on its own behalf and commitment to pay any tax demands before exhausting all available legal remedies
5-Feb-14	The Delhi High Court amends its December 12, 2013 ruling, requiring Nokia to commit to pay taxes for which it is not legally liable and waive its international rights to defend itself
12-Feb-14	Nokia India announces it will appeal the decision of the Delhi High Court to the Indian Supreme Court
Feb-14	Nokia India receives a Rs 2,400 crore (€300m) sales tax bill from tax authorities in Tamil Nadu, who claim that handsets manufactured in Chennai during FY 09/10- 11/12 were not exported but were sold in Tamil Nadu
14-Mar-14	India’s Supreme Court dismisses Nokia India’s asset freeze appeal, allowing the Delhi High Court order to stay in force
21-Apr-14	Nokia confirms that the Chennai factory will be excluded from the Microsoft deal, due to the asset freeze imposed by the Income Tax Department
25-Apr-14	Nokia globally completes the sale of substantially all of its Devices & Services business to Microsoft.
29-Apr-14	The Madras High Court orders the Tamil Nadu tax authorities to reconsider their sales tax claim against Nokia India. The Court asks Nokia to provide Rs 240 crore, or 10% of the disputed tax demand, as a deposit within eight weeks as a precondition for the two sides to discuss the claims
14-May-14	Nokia announces that it has sent a letter to Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh under the Finland-India Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) seeking amicable resolution of the tax dispute
6-Oct-14	After Microsoft ends its transitional services agreement (TSA) agreement (for Sriperumbdur facility), Nokia announcs from November 1 operations will be suspended
10/31/2014	The last working day of the Chennai factory

Microsoft, which kept Nokia brand to only feature phones while selling smartphones under Lumia, acquired Nokia device business for USD 7.2 billion and the deal was closed in April 2014. However, as the Delhi High Court was in the process of hearing on the Nokia tax dispute ,Microsoft, eager to settle the acquisition row without any hassles, has been  keeping its fingers crossed. The software major does not want to meddle with the legal tangle Nokia currently is in and wants to stay away from row till the issue is settled. “As this is a Nokia dispute,Microsoft will not issue a comment on the matter,” Waggener Edstrom, the global communication consultant who handles Microsoft media account, commented.

An analyst, specialising in mergers & acquisitions, indicated that it is pertinent for a global company like Microsoft to stay away from the heat generated during the legal recourse regarding Nokia’s tax liabilities. There are certain binding rules as far as agreements are concerned. “Obviously they would want Nokia to come to the table with clean hands or else the Chennai assets would be kept out of the agreement for time being.” Under the terms of the agreement of the deal Microsoft is to transfer close to 32,000 people, including 4,700 people in Finland and 18,300 employees directly involved in manufacturing, assembly and packaging of products worldwide to its own company rolls.

Retrospective amendments to tax laws brought in 2012 by the then UPA government forced the Nokia plant to shut down in November 2014, causing more than 15,000 direct employees to lose their jobs. Nokia, once an iconic mobile handset maker, in 2014 decided to shut down its plant at Sriperumbudur, near Chennai. The company said it had decided to stop production at its Chennai plant from November 1, 2014, in the absence of orders from its new parent firm (Microsoft), which terminated the mobile purchase agreement. The Nokia factory at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu  remains one of the largest manufacturing facilities for mobile phones in the world.

Disclaimer / Caveat: Whatever I have stated is publicly available information and does not represent the view of the firm I work for.

(This post is not copyrighted and may be reproduced freely with appropriate attribution of source)

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[1] Withholding taxes are a government’s way of making sure that the proper taxes are paid on an item by way of either withholding or deducting the relevant tax amount from an individual’s or an enterprise’s income. They are of particular note to international companies doing business with India yet without a presence there, as some services provided to Indian customers can be subject to withholding tax. They may also impact on foreign subsidiaries of international companies in inter-company agreements.

[2] DTAA or Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement is a tax treaty that India has with 65 other countries. These agreements give the right of taxation in respect of the income of the nature of interest, dividend, royalty and fees for technical services to the country of residence. However, the source country is also given the right but such taxation in the source country has to be limited to the rates prescribed in the agreement. The rate of taxation is on gross receipts without deduction of expenses.

[3] An escrow account is a temporary pass through account held by a third party during the process of a transaction between two parties.

Didi Digital

Technology has profoundly changed the way people absorb communications, and even whether they chose to absorb at all. The rapid dissemination of smart phones, broadband and wireless internet connections and ad-skipping digital video recorders has worn the effectiveness of the traditional mass media. Citizens of a country not only have more choice of media, they also get to decide whether and how they want to receive commercial content.

A political or electoral campaign may be viewed as a well-planned marketing effort which seeks to influence the decision making process within a specific group. In modern politics, the most high profile electoral campaigns are focused on general elections and candidates for head of state or head of government, often a president or prime minister or a Chief Minister.

Elections in our country have always been a display of triumph of the best advertising practice, where the political party, which promoted its manifesto in the most relevant way (in the most relatable way for the public), would emerge victorious. With passage of time, however, the advertising techniques in elections are fast changing to suit the requirements of the digital world. Hoardings, wall posters, leaflets, flags and other printed publicity material has always been and are still a part of election campaigning. Nonetheless, real-time promotions on social media[1], backed by smart looking ads on television and the radio are being used in contemporary elections on a massive scale for propaganda purposes, as these mediums can harness the full attention of the voters.

The re-election of Mamata Banerjee as the Chief Minister of West Bengal, and the win of Ms.Banerjee led Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the 2016 West Bengal assembly elections with a gargantuan majority, may be attributed in part to the embracing of new marketing practices. TMC’s electoral campaign in the recently concluded Assembly election in West Bengal combined an enigmatic politician, a commanding message of development, and a thoroughly cohesive modern marketing program.

The "outsider" from the backstreet of Kalighat

What is undeniable is that Chief Minister Banerjee is mass leader, and is able to establish an instant connect with the majority of her voters, especially womankind. The West Bengal Chief Minister likes to project herself as a plebeian folk heroine in crumpled sari and chappals[2] who revels in her street-fighting image.  Ms. Mamata Banerjee is the quintessential “outsider” from the backstreets of Kalighat[3] who surged ahead without a political godfather. She is also regarded as a nonconformist who has little respect for customs and protocol, and that is precisely one of the drivers of her popularity and pull.

Circa 2011

As soon as she became the Chief Minister of the state of West Bengal in 2011[4], Mamata Banerjee channelised her plentiful energy to usher in development and implement socio-welfare schemes that eventually helped her preserve power in this eastern state of India. She doled out loans to the jobless youth for self-employment, scholarships to girls, arranged for free medicine and treatment in state-run hospitals, among others. Yet, in the build-up to the 2016 West Bengal assembly elections, the TMC was caught up in allegations of corruption, with the twin scandals of Narada[5] and Saradha[6] engulfing her partymen.

Most importantly, Didi (as Ms.Banerjee is popularly called in West Bengal) put in place an enormous propaganda machinery to tell the people about the development efforts and welfare schemes undertaken and implemented by the TMC government in the past five years.

Didi Goes Digital

Increasingly, all the politicians with strong grassroot mass bases - from Modi to Kejriwal to Mamata, have recognised that digital technologies are an essential facility to reach out to their voters and they use it as a critical rapid response tool”. Most leading political leaders have realised the need for voters to connect with their prospective leaders and vice versa and used it for disintermediation.

Very early on, TMC understood the value of the internet platforms and information technology for youth engagement. The TMC having realised this used modern internet communication technologies to drive voter engagement (much akin to modern customer engagement programs), ground mobilisation and put in place a counter-narrative to negative publicity around high-profile incidents like the Kolkata flyover collapse or the political sting expose.

Abhishek Banerjee[7], MP and also founder president of the TMC youth wing, directed the party’s communication initiatives, crunched data and led digital and communications war-room from Kalighat supported by former quizmaster and MP Derek O Brien. They raised a sharp core of youth volunteers from national law schools, business schools who worked as a tight 24x7 rapid response team, quickly analysing daily events, news breaks, rival campaigns, prepared briefing memos and factsheets for Mamata and Abhishek which the two leaders used in their direct public contact campaign programmes. The TMC also took its youth-connect strategy one step forward by creating a mobile application that can be downloaded on Android and IOS handheld and portable devices.

West Bengal has 65 million voters. About 21 million people in the state are connected to the internet. A recent IAMAI study found 8.3 million Facebook users in the 18+ voting age in the state, besides finding 70 constituencies in Bengal which were likely to be highly impacted by engagement on social media platforms, particularly on Facebook.

Mamata Banerjee's digital outreach through Facebook and Twitter has been commendable, as she used these digital platforms  to run a series of synchronised online and offline marketing & promotional activities and an extensive campaign for more than 45 days.

Chief Minister Banerjee also became the first Indian politician to use a Facebook 360 video[8] for an election rally. In the middle of the seven-phase election, Mamata Banerjee did a Facebook Q&A to cover more ground and reach out to young constituents. “Q&A with Didi” was a huge hit among first-time voters in West Bengal.

She also did an impromptu Facebook-live[9] ahead of Naboborsho or the Bengali new year, which received huge engagement in views and likes. On 13 April, 2016, Mamata Banerjee had posted her first Facebook LIVE video which got over 2 lakh views in less than 24 hours.

According to the official Twitter handle of All India Trinamool Congress, the TMC chief wrote on her Facebook page: “I am happy to share with all of you the new Facebook 360 degree video that is being used for the very first time ever, for any election campaign in India. Please watch some clips of a padyatra held earlier this week at Bardhaman town. My salute to the Ma-Maati-Manush for their overwhelming enthusiasm and participation. Yes, Trinamool is winning.”

A TMC music video, which claims that the face of West Bengal has changed in the last five years, has been played around 70,000 times across various digital platforms since it was released. The two-minute video has the new party anthem “Paanch bochore bodle geche banglar mukh” (The face of Bengal has changed in the last five years) written and composed by popular singer Anupam Roy. “This is the first State election campaign song to make its debut on Facebook and has gone viral very quickly. It is remarkable how they have made it so catchy and apt for the digital medium,” Ankhi Das, Public Policy, Director of Facebook, told the Press Trust of India (PTI). On Ms.Banerjee’s Facebook page alone, the video got over 45,000 hits. The TMC also has a presence on SoundCloud[10], where they have put out the election campaign song.

Chief Minister Banerjee also used Facebook and Twitter to promote a short film series that went with the hashtag #RealBengal that basically highlighted her government’s achievements in the last five years (2011-16) with 'real stories' of people. She also tweeted these videos on Twitter along with sharing pictures of the various rallies she participated in. Banerjee's Facebook page got liked by about 16 lakh people and her Twitter handle Mamata Banerjee@Mamataofficial has more than 2.6 lakh followers. "Mamatadi is a mass leader and she from the very beginning had gauged the importance of social media - be it Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or WhatsApp. Even if she conducts a rally with two lakh people she believes in posting a Facebook message or a tweet," said Brien, who himself has more than six lakh followers in Twitter.

Last but not the least, the TMC also has a website that has a weekly poll, their manifesto[11], a voter's guide, student's corner and a little widget that counts the number of days in government.

The Verdict

The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress won for the second time the West Bengal assembly elections with a thumping majority in 2016. TMC secured 44.9% of votes in this election, almost six percentage points higher than in the 2014 general election, to claim 211 of 294 seats. Fighting incumbency and the opposition alliance of the Left and the Congress, the TMC now has a solid two-thirds majority having bagged a total of 211 seats.

With a substantial gain in vote share in the 2016 assembly election (as compared to the 2011 assembly elections), the Chief Minister of West Bengal has established in absolute terms that her politics of redistribution and largesse give her an irrefutable strength , with which she can overcome even her own party’s shortcomings. 

A post poll analysis of conversations on Facebook regarding the Assembly polls across all states (in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry)done by the social media giant shows that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was the top leader, figuring in 22 % of the conversations – crowning her as the most talked about political leader on Facebook in India.

Disclaimer / Caveat: Whatever I have stated is publicly available information and does not represent the view of the firm I work for.

(This post is not copyrighted and may be reproduced freely with appropriate attribution of source)

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[1] Social media are computer-mediated tools that allow people, companies and other organizations to create, share, or exchange information, career interests, ideas, pictures and videos in virtual communities and networks.

[2] Chappals are a type of open-toed sandal, typically worn as a form of casual wear. They consist of a flat sole held loosely on the foot by a Y-shaped strap or thong that passes between the first and second toes and around both sides of the foot.

[3] Kalighat is a lower to middle income class locality in Southern Kolkata from where Chief Minister Banerjee hails. It is also famous for housing the famous Kalighat temple.

[4] In 2011 Mamata Banerjee had pulled off a landslide victory for the TMC-Congress alliance in West Bengal by defeating the 34-year-old Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front government, the world's longest-serving democratically-elected communist government.

[5] A political sting expose on select TMC leaders carried out and telecast by Narada portal.

[6] The Saradha Group financial scandal was a major financial scam and alleged political scandal caused by the collapse of a Ponzi scheme run by Saradha Group, a consortium of over 200 private companies that was believed to be running collective investment schemes popularly but incorrectly referred to as chit funds in Eastern India. Many prominent personalities were arrested for their involvement in the scam including two Members of Parliament (MP) - Kunal Ghosh and Srinjoy Bose, former West Bengal Director General of Police Rajat Majumdar, a top football club official Debabrata Sarkar, Sports and Transport minister in the West Bengal Government – Madan Mitra.

[7] Abhishek Banerjee is an Indian politician and a Member of Parliament to the 16th Lok Sabha from Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha constituency, West Bengal. He won the Indian general election, 2014 being an All India Trinamool Congress candidate. He is also the National President of All India Trinamool Youth Congress the youth wing of the All India Trinamool Congress, a political party in India, currently in power in the Indian state of West Bengal. He is also the nephew of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

[8] A 360 video is created with a camera system that simultaneously records all 360 degrees of a scene. Viewers can pan and rotate a 360 video's perspective to watch it from different angles. These videos have a “360 video” label in the lower left-hand corner and are viewable on computer, iOS devices and Android devices.

[9] Live videos are real-time video posts on Facebook. Live videos from public figures you follow and your friends will appear in your News Feed. When you're watching a live video or a video that was live, you can tap or click Subscribe to get notified the next time that Facebook account starts a live broadcast.

[10] SoundCloud is a global online audio distribution platform based in Berlin, Germany, that enables its users to upload, record, promote, and share their originally-created sounds. By allowing sound files to be embedded anywhere, SoundCloud can be combined with Twitter and Facebook to let members reach an audience better. By clicking a share button corresponding to the site where they wish to promote the shared content - such as Facebook - and approving the post, artists and publishers can let audiences on that site see the content through their desired media outlet.

[11] Released in five languages, including Alchiki—a language used by Santhals and tribes in Jangalmahal—the  Trinamool Congress (TMC) manifesto for 2016 West Bengal assembly polls  was written in first person by chief minister Mamata Banerjee herself